Experts say as the times change, so must coaches

William Straub grew up during a time when teachers and coaches were held in unquestioned esteem.

KEN McMILLAN

William Straub grew up during a time when teachers and coaches were held in unquestioned esteem.

"When I was playing, if you didn't do something right and you went home and told your father about it, he would kick you in the pants and send you back to do it right,'' he said.

"It was a different era back then,'' Straub said of his high-school years in the early 1940s and the early part of his coaching career at Saugerties from 1951-66. "In coaching parlance, no matter what the coach did, the coach was right.''

Much in society has changed over the last half-century: It's more common for authority to be challenged, both for good and bad, and most coaches have evolved into leaders who are more sensitive to their athletes. That's why incidents of abusive coaching practices have become notorious in recent years.

Celebrated examples of coaches crossing the boundaries of accepted behavior have been plenty, from Bobby Knight physically accosting his basketball players at Indiana and Texas Tech to former Rutgers coach Mike Rice hurling basketballs and profanities at his athletes. Locally, two civil lawsuits have been aimed at Marlboro High School varsity football coach Rich Ward for alleged physical and verbal abuses.

Dr. Glenn Geher, the chairperson of psychology studies at SUNY New Paltz, said appropriate behavior is dictated by social norms and social conventions.

"I think there's an expectation of mutual respect,'' Geher said, "regardless of whether we're trying to motivate someone or trying to drive someone toward victory. When people deviate from that, when a Bobby Knight deviates from that, we feel a level of disgust "» that's a natural response to that.''

The perpetrators of such acts may reflect their own history, Geher claims.

"If you have a coach that fits that model of (being) a jerk coach or a-hole coach or a very dominant kind of coach "» they were competitive in a lot of ways, maybe leading to their upbringing,'' Geher said. "Perhaps they were viewed as never being good enough, from a parent, a father or prior coaches.''

Straub, who earned degrees in sports science and clinical psychology after his coaching career, echoes the notion.

"I think we're a product of our genes and we're a product of our environment,'' said Straub, noting the hypothesis of famed psychologist Kurt Lewin. "It's very difficult to escape your environment, especially if you grew up with tough coaching, swearing and a hard-nosed environment, but that's not the kind of personality types we want in coaching today.''

Unfortunately, Straub says, a community may turn a blind eye to an abusive coach when a team is winning. "When you are losing, though, you have a 'for sale' sign in front of your yard,'' Straub added.

For all the gray area and interpretations, most bad actions have been spelled out in school district manuals dictating behavior for students and teachers.

"If they are doing something inappropriate, it's probably inappropriate on the football field or in the classroom or anywhere,'' said Anthony Monti, the Varsity 845 girls' soccer coach of the year and a school psychologist at Goshen Middle School.

Monti said he cannot fathom how Mike Rice couldn't see his own abusive actions, nor could he understand why a Rutgers assistant coach never stepped in to defuse matters.

"How do you not have the ability to see yourself?'' Monti said of the actions that got Rice fired as a result. "It's hard for me to see how someone didn't step in, like an assistant coach, but also how he was able to see himself and how he was dealing with the students.''

Monti said no coach is perfect so it's important for them to self-analyze what they do after every practice and every game.

"You have to go to your assistants and say 'Was I too strong there, was I not strong enough, did I not say the right things, did I leave something out?' You always want to have feedback. You can't assume that your way is the correct way of doing thing; it might not be.''

When it comes to coaching by gender, Monti believes girls need more feedback on a consistent basis. In general, though, Monti operates under the policy of praising individually but critiquing a team as a whole; if he needs to admonish an individual, it's never in front of the group.

"There is a time and place for that, even in coaching Little League, which I have done,'' Geher said. "If someone is out of line or just not playing the position right, there is a big difference between pointing a kid out before other parents "» instead of saying between innings, 'Stand here.' You can achieve the same thing without that public humiliation.''

In one of the Ward lawsuits, it is alleged he denigrated his players and used gender, racial and homophobic slurs — Geher said such behavior is unacceptable in all situations. "We're at a point where that has to be taken seriously at all levels in athletics,'' he said.

"We're in a different era,'' Straub said. "I don't think you can call kids derogatory names and get away with it for very long; back in my day it was par for the course and nobody thought about it

If it's a hard-nosed community in Pennsylvania, football is king and the coach could get away with most anything except immoral behavior.''

Straub said he looked at sports and coaching in a whole new light after earning his doctorate degrees, and, to some extent, regrets some of his coaching actions from long ago. He even took to writing some of his former players to clear up any hard feelings.

"I was a tough coach to play for,'' said Straub, who punished his football players with running laps and doing push-ups. "I am much more humanistic today. We're attracting to coaching a more humanistic refined type of person these days. These coaches who are cursing and swearing are not going to be tolerated today.''

kmcmillan@th-record.com; Twitter: @KenMcMillanTHR

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